Tag Archives: anarchy

SoCS: Anarchy

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The Just Jot it January challenge is almost over. Only 1 more day!

That’s a good thing, cause I’m leaving early Monday morning. I’ll be in school for a month in Mexico. I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to spend online (and I’m sure I won’t be wanting to spend much!).

Today’s prompt is: SoCS – “an” as a word or at the beginning of a word

Anarchy.

That’s my “an” word. I’m a libertarian. I thoroughly believe that each and every person on this planet owns their own life and should be able to do everything and anything they want (as long as they don’t hurt anybody else), and they will take the consequences of their choices. I believe in the absolute MINIMUM government possible.

That really ought to be possible, and a good way to run a society. In fact, the United States was founded on that principle. The country was set up to have an EXTREMELY LIMITED government. There are only about 8 things that the US government is authorized to do! EIGHT! Yes, that is true.

Read Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution. There it is, right there in black and white.

So, how in the HELL did we get from that to the situation we have today, where we have millions of “laws”. “Laws” that restrict and regulate every tiny little detail of our lives? Adding thousands more EVERY SINGLE DAY! Almost every one of them in violation of the Constitution which IS the SUPREME law of the land!

Every time I get into a political discussion and bring up my distrust and skepticism of the government, how it has grown into a tyrannic police state, people bring up Somalia.

They seem to think limited government is the same thing as NO government, which it is not. They also seem to think that the situation in Somalia is due to anarchy. It is not.

I am not an anarchist. Although the more I learn about it, the closer I come. Probably just because the more I learn about government, the more I am against it. I read a lot of history (also philosophy). I can’t imagine how anarchy could possibly be any worse than government. At least then, people wouldn’t expect the people they pay to take care of them to continually abuse them. Maybe they would actually fight back and take control of their own lives again.

Maybe governments might start out decent, but eventually the concentration of power completely corrupts them. They just get worse and worse until the people finally have enough and revolt. They abuse people basically at will. They supposedly have the monopoly of the use of force, but they use it against their own populations and the people can’t fight back. They control the education (propaganda) and teach the people that they SHOULD bow down to ‘the authorities’. How in the HELL is that a good thing?

I’ll never understand why so many people seem to think they DON’T have the right to live their lives the way they choose, that they somehow OWE their lives to some supposed ‘authority’. That just because they happened to be born on one particular spot on this planet, they owe their entire lives to whoever happens to take power in that locale. They bust their asses every day just to survive and their leaders steal whatever they feel like and they’re supposed to be thankful that they don’t steal even more. That just makes NO sense to me.

I better stop now.

Anarchy: The Basis for a Civilized Society, Part 2

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Anarchy: The Basis for a Civilized Society, Part 2 | Laissez-Faire Bookstore.

Here’s the second part of the post I put up last night about Crispin Sartwell and his book Against the State.

The main part of the book is spent in destroying the classical arguments for the State, from thinkers like Hobbs, Locke, Hume, etc. Then he takes up the discussion of why anarchy?

There are plenty of reasons, not least of which, it has worked in the past and still works right now all over the world (example: bowling leagues, ‘invisible hand’ of the market, etc). That is the argument from utility. The other argument is from morality. 

Is it better to argue for anarchy from utility or from morality? I agree with him that the moral position is better.

I think its pretty basic that (non masochist) people don’t want to have violence used against them. People are naturally OK with the Golden Rule. I think that’s a pretty good starting place for society. In fact, I think that’s pretty much the ONLY rule we really need to live in any society. 

Sartwell talks about Lysander Spooner as a good person to refer to. Another writer/philosopher he talks about is Josiah Warren and his book The Practical Anarchist.

I would add Ayn Rand, her writing explained the reasons to value your self very simply. Try her book The Virtue of Selfishness. It’s very short. 😉 Self ownership is the basis for how I think humans should relate towards each other. Society is made up of individuals (duh). A strong, vibrant society is impossible without strong individuals who make it up. The only other alternative to self ownership is slavery and I will never agree with any form of slavery. 

I hope more people start thinking about things like this, instead of just swallowing whatever they’re told in school or on the TV. It’s pretty important. If we don’t have any kind of basis, any foundation, any principles, then how can we expect our society to last? Like a house with a damaged foundation, it will fall down sooner than one with a strong one. 

Our country was based on principles very close to anarchy. We had a VERY limited government, it was a minarchy. Now, we have a bloated beast of bureaucracy and it rules every tiny little detail of our lives.

I can’t count how many times people tell me that if I don’t like the government, I can move to Somalia where they don’t have one. OK, I’m not really up on the details of Somalia but I’ll give you my take anyway…

Somalia is only fighting over WHO is going to be in charge, not that there will or won’t be somebody in charge. So it’s not a stateless society at all, it’s a society with a competition of states. State is defined as the monopoly of the use of force. 

So, Somalia is not a place to go if I don’t like government, it has an overabundance of them and will have to wait for the dust to settle and somebody wins. There’s no place on Earth that I’m aware of that has NO government, if there was, I would absolutely take them up on that and go there asap! 

Anarchy: The Basis for a Civilized Society

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Anarchy: The Basis for a Civilized Society | Laissez-Faire Bookstore.

In an interview with Crispin Sartwell discussing anarchy and his latest book Against the State, Chris Mayer digs into the questions of what’s really so wrong with anarchy?

I’d really like to know. I agree with them that the left-right paradigm is a big mistake (a scam). All it does is divide us into warring parties and allows the people who really run things free latitude to do whatever they want while we’re distracted.

The reason I posted the Worlds Smallest Political Quiz (http://captjillsjourneys.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/worlds-smallest-political-quiz/) as a sticky at the top of my blog was to get people to take the quiz and hopefully find out they might not really be what they’ve been labeled as. That there are other options out there other than just Democrat (left/liberal) and Republican (right/conservative).

It’s a real shame that our media has been taken over by the corporate world and so we never manage to get any real information about the choices we have during elections. Thank goodness for the internet. 🙂

We ALWAYS have more than just the Democrats and Republicans to choose from! We just have no way of finding that out until we see the other names on the ballot (if like most Americans, you get your information from the major media, TV, etc). By that time, it’s too late to make any kind of informed choice, so most people will vote for the same-old, same-old for no other reason than familiarity.

I’ve been a libertarian since I first heard of them. I’ve been fighting city hall since I was a kid. I believe in the principle of SELF ownership. I’ve always questioned authority and I find myself doing even more of that lately.

Who the hell says they’re authorities? Why?? How come the ‘authorities’ constantly screw things up yet still get treated as the best choice there is????  What makes them any better than the rest of us??? Why in the hell should somebody I’ve never even met who has NO idea what my life is like get to make ANY decisions about MY life????

OK, so maybe now I’m becoming an anarchist, even more than a libertarian. They are very close philosophically. I think its worth thinking about more. I definitely think the system we have now which is basically a corporatocracy (run by corporations)  is terribly wrong and we need to get rid of it asap!

I don’t really think any sort of democracy is much better. Look what’s happened to our country since we all started acting like it’s a democracy (it’s NOT, it’s a Constitutional republic!). Democracy is really just 2 wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner. So who wants to be the sheep??

I don’t! Do you?